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As a copy editor for much of the last half century, "are woke" made me scream out loud. Turns out it is a new piece of millenial jargon and us old fogies (over, say 35) don't know it. See ["Earning the ‘Woke’ Badge" NYT].The third-highest-rated comment addresses the substance of the article:
Still, it's pretty awful, and yes, an abomination.
I see, whites aren't "woke" because 86% of them don't see racism as one of the top three problems in the countries. But neither does a large majority of blacks, 65%. So blacks aren't "woke" neither. Or maybe the problem is with the (typical "if you don't agree with me you are racist" Liberal) reporter?
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17 perfect minutes on woke millenials https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8O1cmw8BeRk
Socially constructed! http://kenblogic.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-apotheosis-of-woke.html
"So blacks aren't "woke" neither."
Ain't woke.
Best I can tell, a person being 'woke' means that, that person adopts and believes the far-left narrative of the world at large. I think 'based' is the similarly functioning adjective for the right side of the political spectrum. I think they both have a connotation for their respective political sides as the person being hip and seeing it how it really is.
Color diversity a.k.a. racism (i.e. denial of individual dignity) is a doctrine of the mainstream left. In their own jargon, the left, and left of center, are not "woke", but wallow in the semantic games played by organized pro-choice churches and the Democratic Party.
Another garbagicle by a black woman.
Woke is Whack.
I am Laslo.
I especially like how the WaPo's definition of "some" is a normal person's definition of "large majority".
But the WaPo is mainstream! Just ask them!
Since it's Let's Hate On Whitey day at Althouse, I offer The Five Types of 'Becky' (admittedly, not the WaPo).
Not woke folk.
The phrase "woke" reminds me of the way people talk about getting religion.
Born again
Saved
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
The idea of expressing enlightenment as a matter of waking up is very old. Socrates says in Plato's Apology (in order to explain why people are so mad at him) that he has been like a gadfly, stinging a horse to keep it from sleeping. My teachers would ask: does it necessarily do the horse any good to be awake rather than asleep? Does being awake in itself means he learns something? In the Republic it is more clear that most people are always in a cave of ignorance, and of course they are not aware of this fact and don't want to admit it. Does Plato think he, or his teacher Socrates, or other great teachers ever really change this situation? Does something like a liberal education get you out of the realm of the shadows, or does it simply provide you with a sophisticated way of organizing and discussing the shadows? The solution today seems to be that history has brought progress, including enlightenment. As long as we are visibly throwing off the bigotries of the past, we are (most of us?) becoming more enlightened than our ancestors. But: freedom from old bigotries may be hard to distinguish from attachment to new bigotries--a slightly different cave.
Ain't woke.
Don't be woke
A few years back, a subset of atheists decided they should be referred to as 'brights.' Apparently, left-wing conformists calling themselves 'woke' has met with more success.
As a copy editor for much of the last half century, "are woke" made me scream out loud. Turns out it is a new piece of millenial jargon and us old fogies (over, say 35) don't know it.
Us readers can be forgiven for wondering if you were a good copy editor.
Paco Wové said...
Since it's Let's Hate On Whitey day at Althouse, I offer The Five Types of 'Becky' (admittedly, not the WaPo).
Saw that @Sailer. The only "Becky" I've ever known was a "Mistress Rebecca" who, around the time the Internets were starting up, made custom videos telling guys they had small dicks. Then she got fat because she was half Peruvian Indian and lost that gig. Is that a "type"?
"Woke" will last about another three weeks. We will need a new adjective, one that doesn't seem like a deliberate offense to English teachers.
I suggest "leftist".
I like those "top 3" comments. Maybe the NYT readers are waking up and noticing what the NYT is up to (or down to) these days.
Ken B said...
17 perfect minutes on woke millenials https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8O1cmw8BeRk
Great clip, Ken, thanks!
Woke, you mean I woke up this morning and embraced my Old White Male Privilege? Good for me.
Racism isn't one of the top three problems. It's possible race politics is, or is at least close, but that's not something that the people/society or even the government should be in the business of doing anything about any more. Every now and then we find insidious practices from the past that are to blame - apparently redlining is the newest and probably most damaging abomination to come to light - and should be fixed. But the government and courts need to stop taking out their shame and embarrassment and guilt onto regular employees. When it comes to employment law all the legal practices care about is one thing: the paranoia over discrimination against one's "protected" category. Otherwise they don't give a shit! Check out their ads! An employer can fire two employees after one assaults the other in order to avoid the "hassle" of fact-finding a case of violence in the workplace, but will bend over backward to determine which one offended which other's most "protected"/sacred sense of identity politics. It's toxic and it needs to end. Apparently very dark-skinned Indians-Americans don't find genitals and skin color to be the most salient predictors of success or failure in America. Maybe American-Americans shouldn't, either.
Lo and behold, the Soros Psyops is also pushing to dividie us on age generations. This already happened on computer savy vel non. They want that wedge driven home. DJT was smart enough to counter that with social media and win the battle about which most old timers are still asleep or ashamed to admit their ignorance is not impressive.
Sam L.
I like those "top 3" comments. Maybe the NYT readers are waking up and noticing what the NYT is up to (or down to) these days.
For a while now, the comments section has been far more humiliating and worth reading than the articles. Now if Vox would just allow comments. They have some high-minded sounding reason for not, but it basically boils down to, "We don't want John Q. Public showing what know nothings are 'explainers' are."
Wake Up Little Susy would be a great theme song for the 2018 Dems. Or maybe, Wake Up Little laTanya with a salsa beat.
Vox needs a comments section? Just write a letter to the editor, like in the old days. WTF is next, a comments section for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? Get a damn grip.
Even the comments sections I'd had the misfortune of reading recently in National Geographic were appalling. Sure, they insulting each other on abstruse details pertaining to paleo-archeology. But still just as useless and overly personal.
I think the lede should be about doxing those people who came up with the meme about being woke.
Sorry, that should be --
I think the lede should be about doxing those @people who came up with the meme about being woke.
Something I remember vividly, but not precisely, from way back in the Nixon administration:
A prominent Republican public intellectual (I've forgotten which one) said something like "Everyone else is 'telling is like it is'. As a traditionalist, I prefer telling it as it is".
Just so, I will never ever be 'woke', but I'm glad to be awake, or even awakened, to the ongoing corruption of language and politics and pretty much everything else.
What if the word "woke" had been popularized by Trumpian hillbillies? Imagine the derision it would've received from all the college "educated" SJWs who eagerly latched onto that word, and who of course now dutifully denounce themselves for having appropriated it from Blacks.
RNB beat me to it. Yes, it reminds me very much of "Brights." I suppose anyone not an atheist is a "Dim."
I (old fogey) learned the meaning, but not the etymology, of "woke" a couple of months ago. I gather that it's pejorative, but maybe only when deployed by an Alt-Righter. Do Millennials wear "woke" with pride?
Desensitized by a lifetime of hysterics, Millenials are much more comfortable with casual racism than their elders. Oh, they'll make the correct noises in the right places, but in their circles of trust they don't hesitate to verbalize racist generalizations that would make a Klansman blush. In an odd way it's comforting, as it suggests that, at it's core, human nature is fiercely resistant to indoctrination.
Isn't it possible that the perception that racism is on the rise isn't just a pile of identity politics agitprop? It wouldn't be the first time one generation fostered in the next generation exactly what they meant to eradicate.
Diversity politics that judge people by the "color of their skin".
Ironically, social liberalism has been a first-order forcing of catastrophic anthropogenic color diversity. Fortunately, most people are not merely divergent, but are actually tolerant of individual differences. Principles matter.
It is ironic to me that people who go to such great pains to paint themselves as enlightened almost invariably do so in ways that parody themselves. It is Comic Justice at work.
"Woke" is code for "delusional".
You are woke if you think the entire world is built on white supremacy, and whiteness isn't even a real thing, but it is genetic privilege and all white people have it and cannot escape it, and also whiteness is the worst thing ever and all white people are racist scum, the worst thing to ever happen on earth, but also you aren't racist because only whites are racist. Even if you're white.
I have written this before in comment sections, but maybe not this one. Either way, it's worth writing again:
'Millenium' and 'millenial' with one N are hilariously obscene if you know Latin. Here are the details: In Latin, mille = 1000 and the form never changes (it's an 'indeclinable' adjective), annus (masculine noun) = year, and anni is the plural (just like cactus/cacti, fungus/fungi, and radius/radii in English). So mille anni means '1000 years' and they can be jammed together into a single neuter noun millennium, also '1000 years' but as a collective - like 'century' vs. '100 years' - they mean the same thing but one is singular, the other plural. The plural of millennium is millennia in Latin and English (just like bacterium/bacteria and datum/data in English).
Anyway, if it were a Latin word (it's not), millenium with one N would a collective noun meaning mille ani, and ani is the plural of the Latin masculine noun anus, which means exactly what it looks like it means. So English 'millenial' with one N would mean 'pertaining to thousands of assholes'. Q.E.D.
It appears that being "woke" has two different meanings, depending on your race. If you are black, being woke means that you think the most important problems in the world are your problems. If you are not black, being woke means thinking the most important problems in the world are someone else's problems.
Mistress Rebecca
I hate the term "woke". It assumes moral superiority based on leftist political bigotries and assumptions that stoke hatred towards other people based on their skin color and sex.
Whenever I hear the term "woke" used to claim enlightenment, I know the user is a pompous asshole moralizer.
Colin Kaepernick is woke. Enough said.
Many of our Posterity are indeed woke, but many more are awake to the progressive corruption forced by liberal semantic play.
I find "woke" to be of great value.
Much like a political bumpersticker it serves as a warning to not bother discussing anything interesting with the person who uses it.
Here's some woke.
There's Old Racism and New Racism and you are New Racism so woke off, progressives:
Old racism said blacks were genetically inferior - meaning they had IQ's on average one distribution lower than whites or Asians due to their immutable genetic heritage.
New racism says that blacks are epigenetically inferior - meaning that they have IQ's on average one distribution lower than whites or Asians due to their mutable genetic heritage. Stress caused by all-pervasive white racism has damaged their DNA or that of their parents leading to sleeplessness, slow mental reactions, and/or criminal aggression and being fat and on and on and on. The "woke" think that as long as you say "it's our fault, we're such damn racists" you can say the exact same things the KKK used to say and get praised for being "woke." For example, you can call for segregation as long as you call it "safe spaces" which are needed to prevent more epigenetic damage.
Old racism and new racism correlate with old eugenics - known as social biology and new eugenics - known as biodemography. The research done by old eugenics in support of racism was supported by the Pioneer Fund; the research done by the new eugenics is supported by tiny behavioral research units inside NIH at the NIA and at NICHD. The founders of biodemography were funded from there. When I say tiny I mean, of course, that they only have several hundred millions to disburse annually. But this is leveraged by the fact that NIH now requires conformity with biodemography in all behavioral research funded by any NIH institute.
Like Alzheimers, "wokeness" is a progressive disease where you lose your memory. Woodrow Wilson? Who is he? Government supported eugenics as part of a national progressive or socialist ideology - what could go wrong?
Make Hillary Great Again - Or Else
I appreciate it when people use the word 'woke.'
It lets me know - immediately - I'm dealing with an idiot, and I move on.
What a sad piece of journalism. I understand it's a common thing for "journalists" to misunderstand and misreport such preference polls, but to take the single top concerns across a population and ascribe that as a set of concerns to individuals within the population is silly. Maybe, it's that these "journalists" simply don't get the distinction between groups and individuals. Geez, when even 65% of blacks don't agree with your "woke"-ness, maybe that should be a red flag.
Even sadder that this uncritical writer, unable to separate her personal preferences from facts and reality, is apparently is a reporter for WaPo's Fact Checker. Not surprising, just saddening.
At least it's easier to spell than "consciousness raising." Perhaps that's why they use it.
There is no way to prove you are "woke". At any moment an activist can remind you that you are white and guilty of being racist no matter what you say or do. It is original sin without forgiveness. It is group guilt for things that happened hundreds of years ago. Even if your ancestors were downtrodden in Europe and emigrated here after the civil war, you are still guilty. It is simply racism.
Toothless,
Althouse has a form to submit letters to her, the editor. I assume you will cease commenting forthwith.
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